1. Scope of Invention
This application relates to golf bags of improved design. More particularly, it concerns golf bags that have unique features including carriage of irons with heads down, improved distribution of club weight and protection of club shafts.
2. Prior Art
Golf bags are manufactured and offered for sale in a multitude of forms from the light weight, subset cloth bags (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,238,109) to the heavy weight, multi-compartment bags (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,598).
Many innovations have been applied in design and construction of golf bags to mitigate problems with prior construction or provide special features. For example, one type innovation concerns protection of the heads of wood clubs (See U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,876,134 & 5,004,345).
While the majority of golf bags carry a full set of clubs loosely and unseparated, another type innovation concerns separating clubs individually or ill groups by providing longitudinal separators therein (See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,311,178, 5,148,915, 5,135,107, 5,279,414, 5,465,839 & 5,544,743).
A further type innovation concerns modification of the top portion or throat of the golf bags to hold club heads individually separated or separated in small groups (See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,596,328, 4,600,100, 4,667,820, 4,995,510 & 5,458,240).
Yet another type Innovation to separate and organize clubs involves providing a special type throat on the bag plus contoured seats or recesses in the bottom of the bag (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,703).
Still another type innovation to separate and organize clubs involves providing grouped ledges and brackets upstanding from the bag throat (See U.S. Pat. No. 3,503,518).
All of the innovations discussed above relate to conventional golf bags into which clubs are inserted, shaft first, with heads up. It has also been disclosed to carry the irons of a golf club set with heads down in an unconventional, rectangular case (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,992).
In addition to club organization problems associated with golf bags, the development of graphite shaft clubs has created yet another problem in carrying golf clubs in even improved type golf bags, i.e., damage to the graphite shafts by "nicking" (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,393,581).
A golf club carrier invented by Leitzel described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,724 teaches a pleated, resilient plastic irons separator for insertion of the irons clubs between adjacent folds into an upright orientation with club heads down. Although club separation is accomplished, any iron will fit between any of the pleats so that club identification is lacking.
Lastly, a very recent U.S. Pat. No. 5,607,053 teaches a golf club storing device invented by Sumiyoshi which stores all of the golf clubs, irons and woods, in the heads down position into elongated flexible tubular sacks. Again, no club identification is afforded by this device.
In spite of the numerous innovations that have been made and applied to golf bags, the vast majority of known golf bags continue to present users with problems, e.g., the top-heavy nature of the bags because the heaviest part of the clubs, namely the heads, are carried at the top of the bags, club damage and ease of identification. The present invention addresses these existing problems and others by providing golfers with an unconventional and remarkably improved type of golf bag.
A principal object of the invention therefore is the provision of golf bags of a unique, improved design.
It is therefore an object of this invention to keep individual irons from coming into contact with one another, to stop them from rattling and to organize them so as to make them easy to locate.
It is another object of this invention to mitigate damage to shafts of clubs made with graphite shafts.
A further object of this invention is to provide adequate space for the head of the putter so it will not touch other clubs even if the putters have a wide variation of sizes and shapes.
It is yet another object of this invention to accommodate a large range in shapes and sizes of woods or drivers carried in a set of clubs and to hold their heads in generally fixed position.
It is yet another object of this invention to carry all irons with heads down at the bottom of the improved golf bag thereby improving weight distribution in the golf bag and mitigating tendency to tip over.
Yet another object of this invention is to enable the new golf bags of the invention to have a size and elongated shape typical of conventional golf bags.
It is still another object of this invention to have the space tolerance to accept and hold all irons of most commercially available golf club sets.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed descriptions given herein; it should be understood, however, that the detailed descriptions, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent from such descriptions.